Five Found Pieces by Stefan Eins

For the August 10th Artwalk through August 12th, Flint Public Art Project presents five found pieces by Stefan Eins, a visiting artist-in-residence in the city through August 21st as a part of the FPAP program.

Stefan Eins is the founder of the legendary New York City alternative space Fashion Moda, which became a stomping ground for Bronx-based artists, graffiti-writers, DJs, rappers, and beat-boys, who mixed with emerging conceptual artists from the downtown scene just starting to gain recognition. Crash, Daze, Fab Five Freddy, John Ahearn, Jenny Holzer, Kiki Smith, and Keith Haring were among the artists who showed in the gallery. It was the space that launched hip hop into the downtown scene and made graffiti a recognized form in the art world. Shows from Fashion Moda traveled across the country, activating collaborative projects with communities in the Midwest, and participated in major exhibitions in Europe. Eins’ work has been exhibited in museums and galleries around the world including Documenta 7 and the Neuberger Museum.

For the Artwalk, Eins is displaying images relating to his ongoing investigations of found formations in urban space, including "Tree," "Kearsley Street," "MCC FabLab," "1421 Illinois," and "Soldier." The works are inspired by objects identified during his first week visiting sites and meeting with collaborators. Large format limited edition prints are exhibited in the windows of the Gazall Lewis & Associates offices on the corner of First St. and Saginaw, and on the unoccupied building at the corner of Second St. and Saginaw. The artist will be present in downtown Flint during the Artwalk and Dropfest to meet participants and discuss the work. 

The Art Project is Hiring

Flint Public Art Project is currently seeking candidates for two part-time staff positions to help facilitate its programming for the coming year. This is an opportunity to collaborate on a wide-ranging project of international scope, be connected to some of the most innovative contemporary artists, designers, architects, planners, photographers, and make a significant contribution to the field. These openings are not limited to local residents but will require spending at least half of the time and often entire periods in Flint to facilitate projects and programs. The program administrator will be paid $1000 per month. The project manager will be paid $650 per month. Applicants should send a CV and letter of interest by July 31 to info@flintpublicartproject.com.


Program Administrator

Ideal candidate will demonstrate: 

- administrative experience

- good organizational capacity

- excellent clarity and facility with verbal and written expression

- firm understanding of mission of project

- interest in and familiarity with contemporary installation, public art, light- and projection, performance, and social practice work

- capacity to reach out to underserved communities and members of underrepresented groups


Responsibilities include:

- reporting to and working as assistant to the producer and creative director

- facilitating programming, scheduling, and sharing technical information with invited artists about sites, local participants, logistics, travel.

- coordinating incoming artists and facilitating collaboration with local participants and partners

- tailoring mission statements to potential funding opportunities and partners, including grants, corporate and local sponsors, beer sponsors, national and international institutions

- corresponding with new artists, reaching out to local, regional, and international participants, including performance artists, musicians, light and projection artists, and installation artists

- participating as artist and cultural producer, designer, and curator

Candidate should have a minimum of a B.A. or B.F.A. in an arts, humanities, social science, management, or relevant field. 

Project Manager

Ideal candidate will demonstrate:

- good interpersonal skills

- excellent organizational capacity

- clarity and facility with verbal and written expression

- firm understanding of mission of project

- interest in and familiarity with contemporary installation, public art, light- and projection, performance, and social practice work

- capacity to reach out to underserved communities and members of underrepresented groups


Responsibilities include:

- reporting to program administrator and director

- coordinating projects by visiting artists

- connecting visiting artists with relevant community organizations or local artists

- facilitating collaborations between artists and groups

- helping source and access materials for projects

- assisting in realizing artists ideas

- providing logistical support for projects

- sharing relevant information with program administrator and director

Candidate should have a minimum of a B.A. or B.F.A. in an arts, humanities, social science, or relevant field.

Dwelling on Waste: Flint

On July 15,  2012, architects Matthieu Bain and Andrew Perkins begin an artist residency sponsored by the Art Project. For the next six months, Bain and Perkins, recent graduates of the State University of New York - Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning, will begin cleaning and maintaining the former Spencer's Mortuary building while living in a neighboring house donated for use of the project. 

The artists are being encouraged by the Art Project to pursue an artistic process responsive to the specific nature of the house and its environment, planning the adaptation of the building for a public use to be determined by them in cooperation with the project, the surrounding community, and local arts groups and institutions. 

Over the coming months, the Art Project will use the building grounds for small public events, meetings, performances--and once it meets building codes--office space for local artists and visitors to our programs. The Spencer's Art House project is modeled after Bain and Perkins' master's thesis, Dwelling on Waste, which transformed a distressed home in Buffalo into a warm off-the-grid shelter for the artists and friends, catalyzing new relationships between neighbors, and demonstrating an affordable and sustainable reuse of abandoned properties in the post-industrial city. 

Cannibalizing the material and spatial remains of the post-industrial city creates a shifting domestic condition guided by necessity. This survivalist architecture must address utilities (water, heat), security, varying climatic conditions, food storage, and mental comfort, always adapting itself according to what it has on hand. This method of design and the restriction of material palette removes the superficial from the work. It addresses economy and sustainability through adaptive reuse of material and space. It confuses social order through a new mode of living, looking to squatting and alternative lifestyles as inspiration. It challenges political bodies by acting as a form of protest to the current housing policies: demolition as a remedy to urban decay.

Ground Breaking Art Party

On Friday, July 13 from 7 pm to midnight, the Public Art Project returns downtown to light up the streets with video projections, glowing dancers in white Tyvek suits, a killer techno DJ, and sculptural lounge seating by New York-based Serbian-Jewish architect Srdjan Jovanovic-Weiss.



The first event in a year of art actions throughout the city, including the Congress for Urban Transformation (CUT) in October and the Free City Festival in May, Ground Breaking Art Party transforms First Street between Saginaw and Harrison into a place of spectacle, beauty, and play.

As dusk approaches, join us in the shadow of the famed Genesee Towers for an open-air Art Party: because this is contemporary art in the new city, and the days of the top-down Charity City are at an end.

Produced by Flint Public Art Project in affiliation with Flint Institute of Arts. Featuring Eric Hinds, DJ Litz, and Flint Community Dance Collaboration.

Impressions of Flint by Sinan Imre

When Stephen Zacks and I left for Flint, Michigan with a truckload of Z-Blocks — sculptural seating structures designed by Srdjan Jovanovic-Weiss of Normal Architecture Office — from New York City last Friday, I did not quite know what to expect. I knew that we were on our way to a supposedly stricken place, thus I could not help but leave with a slight feeling of doubt.

After a long day of driving, our journey led us to Braddock, a small town on the outskirts of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. At this point, I should say that the only places I have traveled to outside New York are places that are known to be attractive for travel. Braddock was not. When you drive into Braddock from the East, the first thing you pass is Edgar Thomson Steel Plant. 

At its gates is a smiling giant, wearing orange worker pants and bending a piece of steel with his bare hands. One could imagine this symbol of strength greeting the habitants of this city back when it was alive with the workers of the steel industry and their families walking through the streets. Now these very streets are lined with abandoned delis, cafes, restaurants, houses, lots and churches. 

But there are still signs of rejuvenation, and seeing that this rejuvenation is starting with art gives me hope. One of the abandoned churches — the 1880’s United Bretheren Church —has been given to artist Caledonia Dance Curry, better known as Swoon. She is part of Transformazium a collective of artists and activists that re-imagine Braddock’s abandoned spaces similar to what the Flint Public Art Project is attempting in Flint.

Upon arriving in Flint, our task was immediately laid out for us. Without rest, we at once wanted to see the abandoned house that we have been given on the condition of fixing it up. Spencer’s Funeral Home, on the corner of University and Grand Traverse streets has been closed for decades. It's been left to rot as many of the other houses in the neighborhood. 

When its doors opened before us, piles of debris, a collapsed roof, boarded windows, no light, filthy air, and a dead squirrel greeted us. I realized at that very moment that it is experiences like the one described here that truly test someone’s faith in their endeavors. I will admit that seeing the condition that Spencer’s was in did shake my confidence. But at once, we started to shovel, opened windows and took down some boards and within minutes, the place had already started to transform. The beautiful two-story historic home that had the potential to be flooded by natural light from each and every direction started to breathe again.

With the Z-Blocks laid out in its lawn the doors wide open, Spencer’s began to attract a lot of the locals. Within a few hours, the entire neighborhood knew what we were going to transform Spencer’s into. Many came to help, others came to just have a conversation. One woman began to cry and hugged us for opening the doors of the funeral home where the service for her grandfather was held. At the end of the day, my faith in the project was twofold what it was that morning. 

The immediate impact of our continuing attempts at revitalizing Spencer’s Funeral Home as a community art center and a place for art happenings combined with the presence of Transformazium in Braddock have already shown me the power that art holds over economic and social improvement. -SINAN IMRE

Flint Public Art Project Wins ArtPlace Grant

Flint Public Art Project Launches Series of Urban Actions Thanks to ArtPlace Grant

ArtPlace releases 47 grants supporting creative placemaking initiatives in 33 communities nationwide

(Flint, MI, June 12, 2012) Flint Public Art Project (FPAP) will soon be launching a series of spectacular and practical actions in the city, featuring inflatable structures, building-scale video projections, urban research programs, and conceptual performances in the street – thanks to a substantial grant from ArtPlace announced today.

FPAP’s ongoing events will be produced in collaboration with visiting artists from Detroit, Toledo, Buffalo, Philadelphia, New York, Los Angeles, Berlin, Japan, and China, bringing the vitality and expertise of the global art and architecture scene to the city. In the fall, the project is organizing a Congress for Urban Engagement that will combine public discussions with programs by urban planners that use innovative tools to involve residents of all ages in designing the city’s future. These programs are being organized in close partnership with Mayor Dayne Walling and chief planner Megan Hunter. Among the visiting architects and organizations expected to participate are Interboro Partners, James Rojas, Damon Rich, Center for Urban Pedagogy, Public Workshop, Dland Studios, and Srdjan Jovanovic-Weiss.

"This project will shine a positive light on Flint and show off the creative work that is taking place here to turn our community around,” Mayor Walling said. “The timing of this project could not be better—it will illustrate new ideas and strategies that can be incorporated into the master planning process.”

In addition to planning, Flint Public Art Project will promote a series of art provocations, architectural form-making experiments, and spectacular video projections, culminating in a May 1- 4, 2013 public art festival. Entries will be open to local, regional, and international participants, inviting proposals for light-and-projection art, performances, and installations to transform a disused former factory site into a temporary public space and demonstrate its potential future use. “We want to encourage residents to feel free to transform the city through their own creative energy and actions,” said Flint Public Art Project director Stephen Zacks. “Every vacant lot is an opportunity to experiment, play, and reimagine.”

Flint Public Art Project will receive a $250,000 grant from ArtPlace, a new national collaboration of 11 major national and regional foundations, six of the nation’s largest banks, and eight federal agencies, including the National Endowment for the Arts, to accelerate creative placemaking across the U.S. To date, ArtPlace has raised almost $50 million to work alongside federal and local governments to transform communities with strategic investments in the arts.

"Across the country, cities and towns are using the arts to help shape their social, physical, and economic characters," said NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman. "The arts are a part of everyday life, and I am thrilled to see yet another example of an arts organization working with city, state, and federal offices to help strengthen and revitalize their communities through the arts. It is wonderful that ArtPlace and its funders have recognized this work and invested in it so generously."

Flint Public Art Project is one of three Southeast Michigan organizations funded by ArtPlace in 2012 and among the 47 creative placemaking initiatives nationwide supported by the collaboration this year. Power House Productions and the Detroit Institute of Arts are also receiving ArtPlace support.  

“The Detroit and Flint projects receiving ArtPlace funding exemplify the best in creative placemaking,” explained ArtPlace’s Carol Coletta. “They demonstrate a deep understanding of how smart investments in art, design and culture as part of a larger portfolio of revitalization strategies can change the trajectory of communities and increase economic opportunities for people.”

ArtPlace received almost 2200 letters of inquiry from organizations seeking a portion of the $15.4 million available for grants in this cycle.  Inquiries came from 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, U.S. Virgin Islands.

In September, ArtPlace will release a new set of metrics to measure changes over time in the people, activity and real estate value in the communities where ArtPlace has invested with its grants. 

Participating foundations include Bloomberg Philanthropies, The Ford Foundation, The James Irvine Foundation, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, The McKnight Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, Rasmuson Foundation, The Robina Foundation, The William Penn Foundation and an anonymous donor. In addition to the NEA, federal partners are the departments of Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, Agriculture, Education and Transportation, along with leadership from the White House Office of Management and Budget and the Domestic Policy Council. ArtPlace is also supported by a $12 million loan fund capitalized by six major financial institutions and managed by the Nonprofit Finance Fund. Participating institutions are Bank of America, Citi, Deutsche Bank, Chase, MetLife and Morgan Stanley.

A complete list of this year’s ArtPlace awards can be found at artplaceamerica.org.

Madagascar Institute Chevrolet Art Park* Projects

Madagascar Institute has been high on our list of proposed participants for more than two years, and since then a lot has happened. The artist collective bought a block of houses in Detroit near the River Rouge plant to use as an artist residency and went from being an underground phenomenon whose dangerous play contraptions made from recycled car parts, jet engines, and industrial materials were featured in alternative spaces, warehouse parties, and Maker Faires to a legal entity featured in the New York Times, Popular Mechanics, and on Science channel shows.

                                                                                  Piotr Redlinski for The New York Times

We finally met up with Hackett at the Madagascar Institute shop, at the end of the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, to discuss what might be possible to do in Flint and how to do it. We agreed that a plan for ongoing production, collaborations with local makers, and a spirit of performance and fun are high priorities for building a useful program.

Madagascar Institute has created a few projects that were particularly funny over the years, in particular the Chariot Race of "jankety, cobbled together, dangerous-to-even-look at" homemade vehicles at the 2010 NY Maker Faire, featuring participants dressed in gold lame short-shorts--especially people who should never ever wear short-shorts--and the Jet Ponies, an amusement ride that involved guests sitting on top of decommissioned airplane engines lit with a blowtorch flying in circles. 

The "This Ride Will May Kill You" sign and waivers were key, but no one was harmed during the event.

*Chevrolet Art Park is the name for a temporary alternative use of the former Chevrolet manufacturing site known locally as "Chevy-in-the-hole."